Sunday September 25, 2005

Getty Had Signs It Was Acquiring Possibly Looted Art, Documents Show* Museum attorneys say half the masterpieces in its antiquities collection can be traced to suspectdealers. Italy seeks return of 42 items.

Home Edition, Main News, Page A-1Metro Desk143 inches; 5221 wordsType of Material: Chronology; Infobox (text included here); Infographic

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For The Record

Los Angeles Times Sunday October 09, 2005Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk5 inches; 199 wordsType of Material: Correction

Getty antiquities A Page 1 article on Sept. 25 reported onallegations by Italian officials that some items in the antiquitiescollection of the J. Paul Getty Museum had been looted from Italianarcheological sites. The article quoted from notes made in 1996 by themuseum's thengeneral counsel, summarizing a conversation she had withDeborah Gribbon about the acquisition of antiquities. The articleidentified Gribbon as the museum's director, but she was deputy directorat the time. The article also said Gribbon had no comment on the notes.Gribbon says she was not asked to comment on that aspect of the articleand that she has no memory of the conversation.Gribbon has also takenissue with The Times' account of how the Getty acquired threeantiquities now identified by Italian officials as having beenlooted. The article said Getty officials learned from a 1985 memo thatthree objects they were acquiring might have been illegally excavated inItaly but went ahead with the $10.2million acquisition anyway.Gribbon maintains that the acquisition had been completed beforereceipt of the memo. She said Getty officials had no indicationbefore the acquisition that the items might have been illegallyexcavated.

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By Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino, Times Staff Writers

Attorneys for the J. Paul Getty Museum have determined that half the masterpieces in its antiquities collectionwere purchased from dealers now under investigation for allegedly selling artifacts looted from ruins in Italy.

Italian authorities have identified dozens of objects in the Getty collection as looted, including ancient urns,vases and a 5-foot marble statue of Apollo.

The Italians have Polaroid photographs seized from a dealer's warehouse in Switzerland that show Gettyartifacts in an unrestored state, some encrusted with dirt -- soon after they were dug from the ground, Italiansofficials say.

In response to the Italian investigation, Getty lawyers combed through the museum's files and questioned staffmembers over several months in 2001, trying to assess the legal exposure of the world's richest art institution.

The Times recently obtained hundreds of pages of Getty records, some of them related to the museum's internalreview.

Those documents show that Getty officials had information as early as 1985 that three of their principalsuppliers were selling objects that probably had been looted and that the museum continued to buy from themanyway.

In correspondence with the Getty, the dealers made frank, almost casual references to ancient sites from whichartifacts had been excavated, apparently in violation of Italian law, the records show. The Getty's outsideattorney considered the letters "troublesome" and advised the museum not to turn them over to Italianauthorities.

Although Italy is seeking the return of 42 objects, the Getty's lawyers did their own assessment and determinedthat the museum had purchased 82 artworks from dealers and galleries under investigation by the Italians.

They include 54 of the 104 ancient artworks that the Getty has identified as masterpieces.

The internal Getty documents include memos, purchase agreements, correspondence and other records goingback 20 years. They paint a picture of a young, aggressive institution determined to build a world-classcollection as governments were placing tight restrictions on the antiquities trade.

Among the findings:

* A 1985 memo shows that Getty officials learned from dealer Giacomo Medici that three objects the museumwas acquiring had been taken from ruins near Naples decades after Italian law made it illegal. The Gettycompleted the $10.2-million acquisition anyway.

* An acting curator accused the Getty in a 1986 resignation letter of turning a blind eye to problems in theantiquities department. With eerie prescience, he said the museum's "curatorial avarice" would someday lead toan external investigation and demands from a foreign government for the return of looted artifacts.

* In 1987, Harold Williams, then chief executive of the Getty Trust, and John Walsh, then director of themuseum, discussed the "prevailing assumption" that antiquities with no documented ownership had probablybeen looted, according to Walsh's handwritten notes. Williams referred to one of the Getty's main dealers, RobinSymes, as a "fence," according to the notes, and asked his staff: "Are we willing to buy stolen property forsome higher aim?"

Williams and Walsh say they were speaking hypothetically and that the museum never knowingly bought lootedartworks.

* In correspondence with Marion True, the Getty's curator of antiquities, Medici and another dealer, Robert E.Hecht Jr., described artifacts they were offering for sale in terms that suggested they were illegally excavated.In one letter, Hecht told True that an ancient urn was being sought by Italian police. The Getty later purchasedthe object.

* In 1993, the Getty bought an ancient gold funerary wreath despite True's initial misgivings that the piece was"too dangerous" to acquire. The Getty later received a copy of an Interpol cable describing the item as having an"illicit origin."

Italian authorities have charged True, Hecht and Medici with conspiring to traffic in looted antiquities. Medici wasconvicted last year and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He has remained free while he appeals.

The trial for True and Hecht began in July and is scheduled to resume in November in Rome.

Medici, Hecht and Symes deny knowingly selling looted art.

The Italian legal offensive poses a threat to one of the Getty's most important collections as the museumprepares to reopen the Getty Villa in Malibu as a showcase for antiquities after a six-year, $275-millionrenovation.

True and her attorneys declined to comment for this article, beyond asserting her innocence.

In a statement, the Getty said Friday that it had "never knowingly acquired an object that had been illegallyexcavated or exported.... "

Although dealers under investigation "have been discredited," the Getty statement said, that "does not meanthat any object acquired from one of them was illegally excavated or exported."

The Getty said it could not comment further on issues raised by "privileged and confidential information" fromthe Getty's files without jeopardizing True's right to a fair trial.

"Based upon the information and evidence that it has seen, the Getty continues to believe that Dr. True's trialshould result in her exoneration," the statement said.

In a separate statement, Williams, the former chief executive, said that it "had been common practice fordecades for reputable museums and collectors to acquire" artifacts with no documented ownership history,particularly when "possible countries of origin were doing nothing to protect their sites or enforce their laws."

Walsh, the former museum director, said: "We all agreed -- and the acquisition policy is clear -- that nothingwould justify buying an object that we knew or strongly suspected was stolen."

Countries Outlaw the Plundering of Antiquities

For centuries, the Mediterranean's ancient ruins had been plundered by invading armies and touring colonialists,amateur collectors and farmers-turned-tomb raiders. When oil magnate John Paul Getty began buying antiquitiesin the 1930s, collectors were more interested in whether artifacts were authentic than in whether they had beenlegally excavated and exported.

In 1939, the Italian government declared that all ancient objects uncovered from Italian soil after 1902 were stateproperty and could not be sold or exported without government permission. But the restriction, like other so-called patrimony laws, was not widely recognized by other countries, and illegal trafficking continued.

That was changing by the time Getty died in 1976, leaving his fledgling museum $700 million to build on hiscollection.

In 1970, a UNESCO convention called on governments to make it illegal to "import, export or transfer ownership"of cultural property without permission from the country of origin. Italy ratified the convention in 1979. The U.S.Congress followed in 1983.

By then, American criminal law was already getting tough on antiquities trafficking.

In 1977, five American dealers were convicted in Texas of conspiring to sell looted artifacts from Mexico. Thecase recognized the foreign government's ownership claim and established that the artifacts were stolenproperty under U.S. law.

By the early 1980s, "people were on notice that if they knowingly dealt in archeological artifacts illegallyremoved from a country with a national ownership law, they were committing a crime in the United States," saidPatty Gerstenblith, a law professor at DePaul University in Chicago and co-chairwoman of the American BarAssn.'s international cultural property committee.

The Getty and other museums faced a dilemma. One choice was to limit their purchases to antiquities held byestablished collections and accompanied by documents showing they had been legally excavated and exported.But the pool of such objects was small.

The alternative was to take a chance on objects without documented ownership history, or provenance. Althoughit is difficult to prove that such objects have been looted, the consensus today among archeologists and legalexperts is that most were probably removed without the source country's permission.

In recent years, court rulings have demolished what had been a common defense among curators andcollectors: that they did not know artworks had been looted.

In 1999, the U.S. government reclaimed a golden libation bowl and returned it to Italy at the request of Italianauthorities. A wealthy New York collector who paid $1.2 million for the item said he didn't know it had beensmuggled. A federal appeals court upheld the seizure.

In 2002, a New York jury convicted a prominent dealer of conspiring to sell a stolen sculpture of an Egyptianpharaoh. The defendant claimed he didn't know it had been stolen. The judge told jurors that they could considerthe dealer's deliberate avoidance of knowledge the equivalent of knowing it had been stolen. Higher courtsupheld the conviction.

Despite the changing legal environment, looters have remained active. They descend on archeological sites,searching for buried objects with long metal probes. In Italy, they have been known to dig up tombs withbackhoes.

The looters work in concert with smugglers who spirit items out of the country, usually to Switzerland, where laxlaws have until recently allowed smugglers to flourish.

Publicly, the Getty and True have decried looting.

In a 2000 speech in Denver to the Assn. of Art Museum Directors, True argued against the practice ofpresuming that antiquities without provenance are "innocent until proven guilty."

"Experience has taught me that in reality, if serious efforts to establish a clear pedigree for the object's recentpast prove futile, it is most likely -- if not certain -- that it is the product of the illicit trade, and we must acceptresponsibility for this fact," she said.

Four months after the speech, Italian officials informed the Getty that True was a target of their investigation.

The case stemmed from a breakthrough in Italy's long-running effort to curb trafficking, a 1995 raid by Swisspolice on a warehouse in Geneva used by Medici, the Italian who supplied many of the Getty's dealers.

Authorities found nearly 4,000 artifacts in various stages of restoration, as well as neatly organized albums withPolaroid photos of thousands of other objects already sold.

The photos depicted what appeared to be freshly excavated objects: ancient pots still in pieces, marble statuescovered in dirt. The Italians were very eager to know what had become of them.

Acting Curator Investigates Provenance of 3 Objects

On learning of the Italian investigation in 2000, the Getty hired a New York criminal defense attorney, RichardMartin, to conduct an internal review.

Among the documents Martin and his colleagues found was a memo showing that the Getty had purchaseditems excavated from an Italian site long after Italian law prohibited it.

In the confidential October 1985 memo, Arthur Houghton, acting curator of antiquities, told Deborah Gribbon,then deputy director of the museum and later its director, that he had looked into the origins of three objects theGetty was acquiring from New York businessman Maurice Tempelsman, a private collector.

They were a ceremonial marble basin with a painted scene from Homer's "Iliad," a sculpture of two mythicalgriffons attacking a fallen deer and a marble statue of Apollo. The Getty paid $10.2 million for the objects, whichdate back 2,300 years.

Houghton had been asked to comment on another expert's theory that the artworks were found together. In thememo, he wrote that he had contacted Medici and learned that the dealer "had bought all three objects from theexcavators."

According to the memo, Medici told Houghton that two of the artifacts had been unearthed from a tomb inSouthern Italy in 1976 or 1977 and the third from the ruins of a villa nearby.

"The fact that the dealer is asserting that he got them from excavators -- that is important," Ricardo Elia, aBoston University associate professor of archeology and an expert on the antiquities trade, said in an interview."It means that the buyers at the Getty would be knowingly buying looted and smuggled antiquities."

The Houghton memo identified Hecht and Symes as middlemen in the sale of the artworks to Tempelsman.

The records contain no indication that Houghton or Gribbon reconsidered the purchase based on what Medicihad revealed. All three objects remain in the collection.

had revealed. All three objects remain in the collection.

Years later, the Polaroid photos found in Medici's Swiss warehouse revealed more about their origin. One of thephotos shows the Apollo lying on a board, unrestored and dirty.

The Italian Carabinieri, or paramilitary police, later posted the picture on its website, calling it an example of"looted art that needs to be returned."

Asked for comment earlier this month, Gribbon sent an e-mail denying that she or anyone else at the Gettyengaged in illegal behavior, adding that patrimony laws "were little known and seldom enforced" at that time.

The information in the Houghton memo was "unverified" and did not prove that the artworks had been illegallyexcavated, said Gribbon, who resigned last year as director of the Getty Museum.

Houghton, who declined to comment, resigned from the Getty in 1986. His resignation letter said he was fed upthat his attempts to investigate a predecessor's conduct had been stifled.

That was the letter in which Houghton criticized the museum for "curatorial avarice" and said Getty leadershiphad chosen "a path of self-enforced ignorance of fact." He predicted that the Getty could face "the demand byanother country or institution for the return of material in the museum's collection."

Failing to deal with these issues, he warned, would be "catastrophic" for the Getty's reputation.

'Troublesome' Letters About 'Illegal Excavations' Cited

On April 30, 1986 -- the date of Houghton's resignation -- True was named curator of antiquities.

True had held positions at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum and aLondon antiquities dealership. She was completing her doctorate at Harvard, where she specialized in ancientGreek vases.

True had met Hecht in 1972 or 1973, when she was a curatorial assistant at the Boston museum. Hecht is thescion of an East Coast department store family who has lived in Europe for decades, nursing a passion for coinsand antiquities.

In 1972, Hecht sold New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art an urn painted by Euphronious, the master painterof ancient Greece. Allegations that the artifact had been recently looted from Italy sparked an internationalcontroversy. The allegations were not proved, and the Metropolitan kept the urn.

True also knew Medici. She was introduced to him at an auction in Switzerland around 1984, she has told Italianofficials. Medici used four Geneva warehouses with showrooms.

In letters to True uncovered during the Getty's internal review, Hecht and Medici made little effort to hide theirinvolvement in selling items of suspicious origin.

In one undated, handwritten letter, Hecht informed True that an ancient vase, or pelike, he had offered to theGetty might not be available because Italian authorities were looking for it.

"Yesterday my friend called me [and] said that since the Carabinieri were looking for the pelike with the arms ofAchilles he abandoned negotiations. So I will not have it," Hecht wrote. "Perhaps others may acquire it. Sorry.Best wishes, Bob."

The Getty purchased the pelike for $42,000 in July 1986.

Museum files list the seller as Fritz Burki, Hecht's Swiss antiquities restorer. Italian court records say Burki hasadmitted that he frequently "possessed, restored and transferred as dummy -- in particular to the J. Paul GettyMuseum -- various objects of illegal provenance received by Medici and Hecht."

In 1991, True wrote to Medici asking for information about the origins of three pottery fragments in the Getty'scollection on behalf of a staff member who was studying them.

In handwritten Italian, Medici replied that the fragments came from a "chamber-type tomb" at Cerveteri, one of

the most heavily looted sites in Italy.

Martin, the Getty's attorney, wrote a memo to Getty chief executive Barry Munitz in 2001 describing the lettersas "troublesome" because they "support the conclusion that Medici and Hecht were involved in dealing withobjects which appeared to be from illegal excavations in Italy."

Although the dealers' letters do not amount to proof, Martin wrote, True's responses do not address the"questionable provenance of the items" or "raise any objections to the plain suggestion that the Getty would beinterested in such items."

In a recent interview, Hecht denied that his letters implied the objects were looted. Asked if he ever sold lootedart, he said: "It depends on what you call looted. I will believe it's looted when I see the documents that proveit's looted."

The Getty's 'Single Greatest Piece of Ancient Art'

In June 1986, True visited Symes at his London office and learned that he was selling a remarkably preservedstatue of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.

The towering sculpture depicts the goddess draped in a wet, windblown gown, her right arm extended toward herworshippers. Part limestone and part marble, the piece probably dates to 400 BC and was the centerpiece of aGreek temple in south Italy or Sicily.

True later told the Getty's acquisition committee that the Aphrodite could become "the single greatest piece ofancient art in our collection. It would be the greatest piece of classical sculpture in this country and any countryoutside of Greece and Great Britain."

Symes said the statue came from an unnamed collector in Switzerland. He offered little else to establish alegitimate provenance, records show.

The statue was unknown to the academic world, leading some scholars and Italian authorities to conclude italmost certainly had been recently looted and smuggled out of Italy.

The Getty had outside attorneys send a notice to foreign governments, including Italy, that an unnamed "majorAmerican institution" was considering buying the statue and asking for any information about its provenance.

While the Getty waited to see if the Italians would respond, Williams, then the chief executive, met with Walsh,then museum director. Walsh took handwritten notes of the conversation and a subsequent meeting.

"We are saying we won't look into the provenance," Williams said, according to Walsh's notes of a meeting onSept. 2, 1987.

"We know it's stolen," the notes quote Williams as saying. "Symes a fence."

The notes also indicate that the men anticipated that a foreign government would demand the return ofantiquities in the Getty's collection. Williams is quoted as suggesting that the museum ask Symes about theorigin of other items he was offering for sale.

Williams then posed a question: "If he doesn't defend, do we surrender to the government?"

The Times reviewed the notes separately with Walsh and Williams, who confirmed their authenticity.

Both men said their remarks were strictly about a new acquisition policy, not about the Aphrodite. Williams saidhe used Symes as an example because he was a prominent dealer.

"I was going through various hypothetical situations: What if we receive a stolen object? What if it turns out oneof our dealers -- say someone like Symes -- turns out to be a fence?" said Williams, a lawyer who has served aschairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, dean of the UCLA business law school and boardmember of Times Mirror Corp., former parent company of the Los Angeles Times.

Walsh said: "He was not talking about a specific object. Neither he nor any of us had information that any workwe were considering buying was stolen."

Two days after their Sept. 2, 1987, meeting, Williams and Walsh met with True and Bruce Bevan, then a Gettylawyer, to discuss "antiquities ethics," Walsh's notes show.

Williams told the group that the "prevailing assumption" about artifacts with no documented ownership was the"likelihood that they are stolen -- in violation of laws," the notes say.

He left the group with this question:

"Are we willing to buy stolen property for some higher aim?"

In a recent interview, Williams said he "probably" overstated the question to provoke his staff to reflect on theimplications of the Getty's acquisitions.

With Williams' question in mind, Walsh said, he went back to his office and jotted the outlines of a new policy.First, he described the ethical challenge facing the Getty, as Williams had summed it up:

"1. We knowingly buy stolen goods.

"2. We knowingly deal with liars by accepting their warranties."

Walsh then sketched what would become the museum's first formal antiquities policy in 1987. It called for themuseum to ask for information from dealers about objects they were selling and, before making a purchase, toask the country of origin whether there was proof an item had been stolen.

The Getty would also publicize an acquisition quickly and return it if shown evidence that it was looted, Walshwrote.

Asking foreign governments for evidence is unlikely to elicit information about an object's origin because illegallyexcavated artifacts are by definition undocumented, experts say.

In the case of the Aphrodite, Italian officials informed the Getty's attorneys that they had "no information as tothe origin and authenticity."

Records show the Getty bought the statue in 1988 for $18 million, a sum not previously disclosed. It was themost the museum had ever paid for an antiquity. In keeping with its practice, the Getty also did not reveal thesource of the statue: Symes.

But Getty officials built stringent safeguards into the museum's contract with Symes in case evidence surfacedthat the statue had been looted. The museum paid $9 million upfront with the balance paid after four years, whenthe dealer's warranty that the piece was authentic and legitimately acquired had expired.

As a precaution, Williams insisted that Symes store more than $9 million in art at the Getty as collateral.

The acquisition prompted an international furor. Italian officials launched a formal investigation into rumors thatthe statue had been illegally excavated in the Sicilian city of Morgantina. But the Italians could not find proof,and the controversy subsided.

Then in 2001, a Swiss resident was convicted in an Italian court of trafficking the Aphrodite, based in part onstatements by local residents that the statue was illegally dug up in Morgantina three months before Symesoffered it to True.

A court later overturned the conviction, ruling that the statute of limitations for the offense had expired. ButItalian officials say the evidence of looting remains unchallenged. They are citing it in their request for the returnof the Aphrodite.

'Something Too Dangerous for Us to Be Involved With'

In 1993, with the Getty's initial antiquities policy in place, True pursued another problematic acquisition: a goldGreek funerary wreath.

An explosion of thin gold leaves and blooms accented by inlaid colored glass, the piece is featured on the coverof the museum's 2002 antiquities handbook. The object is of Greek origin and not a part of the Italian case.

During their internal review, Getty attorneys found an Interpol cable in museum files indicating that the piece hadbeen looted and another document in which True expressed misgivings about the wreath when it was firstoffered to the Getty in 1992.

During a trip to Switzerland that year, True arranged to view the wreath and meet its owner, identified as a Dr.Preis from Munich. But the man she met was an impostor, True wrote soon after, and the unnerved curatordecided to wash her hands of the deal.

"I am afraid that in our case it is something that is too dangerous for us to be involved with," True wrote in June1992 to art dealer Christoph F. Leon, the intermediary in the deal, in Basel, Switzerland.

Six months later, True apparently changed her mind. She asked to borrow the wreath from Leon for study, thenwon approval from the Getty board to purchase it for $1.15 million in 1993. The purchase agreement lists thesource of the wreath as a "private collection, Switzerland."

In 1998, Interpol sent a query to the FBI, asking the agency to interview True about her relationship with Leon,among other things. Getty lawyers found the inquiry in museum files.

"It should be noted," the document states, "that subject Dr. Leon has previously come to the attention of ourorganization in regard to a Greek gold funerary wreath of illegal origin."

It could not be determined what, if anything, resulted from the Interpol inquiry.

Leon, contacted by phone, said he had known True "for a very long time" and confirmed that he was the "in-between man" on the sale of the wreath. He declined to comment further.

Getty Revises Its Antiquities Acquisitions Policy in 1995

In November 1995, the Getty unveiled a revised policy that appeared to raise the bar for the acquisition ofantiquities.

The museum pledged to buy only antiquities that had been published in catalogs and scholarly journals before1995 or were part of "established and well-documented" collections.

Eight months later, the Getty acquired more than 300 antiquities from Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman, NewYork art patrons whose collection was considered one of the finest private holdings in the world.

Known for its quality and variety, the collection included an abundance of rare objects, including statuettes anddoorknockers dating as far back as 2600 BC.

Records show the Getty paid $20 million for 33 pieces, then received the rest as a donation valued at $40million.

Most of the objects had no documented ownership history. Many had been acquired from Medici, Hecht andSymes. The acquisition appeared to violate the museum's policy requiring clear documentation. Responding tocritics in the art world, the Getty insisted that its own publication and exhibition of the collection two years earlierhad brought it in line with the policy.

Getty staffers were "well aware of the risks of acquiring a large number of largely unprovenanced antiquities,"according to a memo written by Getty attorney Penny Cobey.

The review also turned up notes of a phone conversation about the Fleischman collection. The notes were madeby Christine Steiner, then general counsel to the Getty Trust, summarizing a conversation with Gribbon,museum director at the time.

The notes include this cryptic exchange:

"How clean is this stuff?"

"Not very dirty."

Steiner, who left the Getty in 1999, declined to comment, as did Gribbon and Cobey.

In 1999, the museum sent three items, including a marble bust of an athlete, to Italy after an archeologicalpublication identified it as coming from an excavation in Southern Italy.

Documents show that the Getty didn't seek restitution from the Fleischmans, as provided in its contract with thecouple, but went to Symes, who had sold the bust to the Fleischmans. Symes agreed to compensate themuseum with other artworks.

Based on the seized Polaroid photos, the Italians have identified 11 other objects from the Fleischman collectionas having been looted and are seeking their return.

Barbara Fleischman, a Getty board member since 2000, denied that the museum had laundered objects throughher and her late husband's collection and said they never thought the items they were buying could have beenlooted.

Provenance, she added, was "not an issue at the time."

"We were absolute innocents," she said. "We thought we were buying it from legitimate dealers. Looking back atit, maybe it was naive."

Symes' Guarantees About Statue Called 'Worthless'

In 2001, Italian prosecutor Paolo Ferri flew to California to question True under oath about the Getty'sacquisitions and her dealings with Medici, Hecht and Symes.

Afterward, True sparked a debate among Getty attorneys and top officials when she drafted a proposal toacquire a Hellenic bronze statute of the sea god Poseidon. The Italians had long claimed the piece was looted.

The British Railway Pension Fund had bought the statue from Symes in 1976. A controversy erupted when itwas exhibited two years later: A leading Italian scholar said it had been dredged from the Bay of Naples andsmuggled out of the country.

Symes had told the British pension fund that he legally acquired the statue from a Greek woman who, with herlate husband, had bought it in 1938 and kept it in Switzerland.

Getty attorneys learned that the woman was actually the aunt of Symes' former business partner and of suchlimited means that she probably never owned valuable art.

The discovery fueled worries that True's attempt to buy the controversial statue would provoke Italianauthorities, who had already put the Getty on notice they were investigating Symes.

Italian authorities have interviewed Symes for a total of 24 hours about the antiquities trade, he acknowledged ina recent interview.

Cobey, the Getty's in-house attorney, argued that True faced "substantial risks ... by allowing herself to beassociated with this acquisition, given the object's history and her own unresolved status with Prosecutor Ferri,"records show.

She characterized Symes' guarantees about the statue's background as "worthless."

Cobey declined to comment. The Getty eventually abandoned the purchase.

"Even in the absence of absolute proof of theft," Cobey wrote in one e-mail, "when should a reasonable personsee that the sirens are going off, the red lights flashing?"

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Safeguarding treasures

Timeline tracks reforms and legal developments in the world of antiquities.

1939: Italy passes a cultural patrimony law declaring all archeological artifacts to be government property unlessthe items were in private hands before 1902.

*

1970: A UNESCO convention calls for tighter international import-export restrictions on cultural property.

*

1977: Several art dealers are convicted of conspiring to sell stolen artifacts in the first American criminal case torecognize a foreign country's ownership of archeological items under U.S. law.

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1979: Italy ratifies the UNESCO accord.

*

1983: Congress ratifies the UNESCO accord, committing the U.S. to greater import controls on antiquities.

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1987: The Getty Museum announces its first antiquities acquisition policy, which relies on the guarantees ofdealers and puts the burden on foreign governments to prove an artifact has been looted.

*

1995: In September, Swiss authorities raid Geneva warehouses, seizing thousands of illicit antiquities andphotos of thousands more. Items shown in 42 of the photos were later identified by Italian police as being in theGetty's collection.

In November, the Getty announces a tougher acquisition policy that allows the museum to purchase only thoseantiquities held in private collections before 1995 or with written documentation.

*

1999: Getty antiquities curator Marion True testifies on Italy's behalf in favor of tighter U.S. imports ofantiquities. The Getty returns three items to Italy after discovering they had been stolen or looted.

*

2000: Italian authorities notify the Getty that True is a target of their investigation into the looting of antiquities.

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2001: The Getty's outside counsel advises Trust chief executive Barry Munitz not to give Italian authoritiesseveral "troublesome" documents that show True had close relationships with two art dealers, both of whomhave since been named her co-defendants.

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2005: True trial is to resume in Rome in November.

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Source: Times reporting

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Italian authorities seek return of artifacts

NOTE: Photos are uncropped archival versions and may differ from published versions.Information on missing images.

J. Paul Getty Museum attorneys discovered that photos seized in a raid and posted as "looted items" on theItalian Carabinieri website (left) matched objects in the museum's antiquities collection (right). Italian authoritiessay a 1995 raid netted photos of 42 Getty objects, some then still encrusted with dirt, suggesting that they werephotographed soon after they were unearthed.

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STATUE OF APOLLO: The Getty purchased this marble statue in 1985 from New York businessman MauriceTempelsman for $2.9 million.

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KANTHAROS: Two-handled cup, or kantharos, was bought in 1985 from Fritz Burki, a Swiss restorer, for$200,000.

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KRATER: Two-handled bowl, or krater, was part of the Fleischman Collection. The Getty bought it in 1996 for$185,000.

Descriptors: J PAUL GETTY MUSEUM; STOLEN PROPERTY; ARTIFACTS; ITALY; TRIALS; TRUE,MARION

GRAPHIC: A dealer's note to Marion TrueID NUMBER:20050925UR1J8C4ICREDIT: Los Angeles Times

GRAPHIC: Italian authorities seek return of artifacts (Statue of Apollo; krater;kantharos)ID NUMBER:200509250A1J83RMCREDIT: Los Angeles Times

PHOTO: Museum officials dealt with questions about looted antiquities: POSEDQUESTIONS: Harold Williams, former chief executive of the Getty Trust, said he wasspeaking hypothetically when, according to a colleague's notes, he called one Gettydealer a "fence" and asked staff, "Are we willing to buy stolen property for some higheraim?"ID NUMBER:20050925el7o2pgwPHOTOGRAPHER: Amy Etra Reuters

PHOTO: WROTE FORMAL POLICIES: John Walsh, former director of the GettyMuseum, said: "We all agreed -- and the acquisition policy is clear -- that nothing wouldjustify buying an object that we knew or strongly suspected was stolen."

ID NUMBER:20050925fylhlqkePHOTOGRAPHER: Lawrence K. Ho Los Angeles Times

PHOTO: LAWS 'SELDOM ENFORCED': Deborah Gribbon resigned last year as directorof the Getty Museum. Asked for comment, she told The Times that patrimony laws"were little known and seldom enforced" when the contested Italian antiquities wereacquired.ID NUMBER:20050925fye4k1kePHOTOGRAPHER: Lawrence K. Ho Los Angeles Times

PHOTO: ASSERTS INNOCENCE: Marion True, the Getty's curator of antiquities, ischarged with conspiring to traffic in looted antiquities. Her trial is to resume inNovember. "Experience has taught me that in reality, if serious efforts to establish aclear pedigree for the object's recent past prove futile, it is most likely -- if not certain --that it is the product of the illicit trade," she said in a 2000 speech.ID NUMBER:20050925eohqpjgyPHOTOGRAPHER: Wally Skalij Los Angeles Times

PHOTO: STATUE OF APOLLO: The Getty purchased this marble statue in 1985 fromNew York businessman Maurice Tempelsman for $2.9 million.ID NUMBER:20050925ind1qync

PHOTO: STATUE OF APOLLO: (posted as "looted items" on the Italian Carabinieriwebsite)ID NUMBER:20050925ind1pnnc

PHOTO: KRATER: Two-handled bowl, or krater, was part of the Fleischman Collection.The Getty bought it in 1996 for $185,000.ID NUMBER:20050925ind24tnc

© Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

PHOTO: KRATER: (posted as "looted items" on the Italian Carabinieri website)ID NUMBER:20050925ind256nc

PHOTO: KANTHAROS: Two-handled cup, or kantharos, was bought in 1985 from FritzBurki, a Swiss restorer, for $200,000.ID NUMBER:20050925ind25knc

PHOTO: KANTHAROS:(posted as "looted items" on the Italian Carabinieri website)ID NUMBER:20050925ind25snc

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